I have found plenty of people who think otherwise, and wouldn't dream of putting their ink anywhere near their printer.Originally Posted by Angloman
You can't assume that the only differentiator between all the sublimation inks available on the market worldwide is price point, that doesn't make sense. How well the ink is going to resist clogging, the quality of the disperse dyes in the ink, how fine the particles are, how well they stand up to killing off any bacterial growth when left in a bottle/printer, how consistently the colours all sublimate, what is their shelf life, how well the colours stand up to light/uv, how well they resist chemicals in washing machines, how well they stand up to sweat (for when printing to garments), how clean a lab/factory are they manufactured in, how pure is the ink mixture (going back to cleanliness of production facility) ... and if buying inks that have been decanted from litre bottles into 100ml bottles so they can be sold on Ebay, how clean an area of that person's kitchen has been used (no matter how clean the facility where the inks were originally made, this all goes out the window if being decanted in someone's home!)How does this ink differ from anybody's else's ink if its a 100ml or a 1 litre bottle, only price.
This is what we do with large format printers, although the cartridges are much biggerI bought some refill cartridges and I got a chip resetter with them,fill up , away I go
We've used a Chinese company in the past (who now stock in UK) so could be the same company you're talking about, buy only for buying large format refillable cartridges, which he doesn't seem to do anymore, which is a shame. I wouldn't buy sublimation inks from him though, as we don't have disposable small home/office printers, wide format printers are more expensive, and there's too much at stake putting unknown/unbranded inks into it (with regard to purity and resistance to clogging etc) when I can get large format inks from a major ink manufacturer for it at a really good price per ml (cheaper than you're getting btw) where it is in a foil-sealed litre bottle, fully branded, with use by date (of usually 18-24 months), and direct from the manufacturers warehouse. We do our own ICC profiling, and get excellent colours.I found the guy in china but now stocks from the UK so 4 x 100ml Ģ30.00 Bargain you say, must be rubbish you say,I actually think its ok and the colour match is very very good.very vibrant colours
With your supplier now stocking unlicensed in the UK, they are now in a trickier situation wrt to legal challenges. What happens if Sawgrass go after him and he gets shut down, and you can no longer get his ink? How do you keep consistency of your printer if you can no longer get your inks? You now have to source a new ink, and get new ICC profiles made up. With a branded ink, from a major manufacturer, who are licensed to produce sublimation inks, you don't run this risk, as there's plenty of suppliers to source it from.
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